From dreaming of the Netherlands to running from Hungary to ‘nearby’ Australia 

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One of the supervisors at a refugee camp in the Dutch city of Zafula tries to be nice while I ask her in bad English for a pen and paper. ‘How are you?’ she answers. I shut my eyes and shake my head trying to understand. Then I remember that she always carries a pen and paper, making notes of some Arabic words and phrases so she can use them later—to be friendly.

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She does many things like that. Yesterday, she distributed prayer times for the whole month, although most refugees in the Netherlands, and in this camp in particularly, are from middle-class areas and are liberal.  

She repeats, ‘How are you?', and smiles, then asks me why I need the pen and paper. ‘I will write about my trip,’ I tell her. ‘To kill time.’ She encourages me and requests to see what I write.

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I spread the white papers in front of me and slowly recall the trip—remembering the scenes in fine detail. I repeat it from its innocent start in Ezmir to its tired and costly end in the city of Venlo inlo in the Netherlands. Each time, all scenes get lost apart from one. No matter how much I try to overcome that scene or classify it as different part of the trip, it still comes back to me. As if that scene is the entire trip. I count the white papers in front of me. I don’t think it is enough to write much, but it’s enough to write about that night.

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I had never seen a moon so full. The sky was open on the Serbian-Hungarian border and huge to the point it was going to be attached to the ground, which in its turn dark and lonely, nothing lights apart from the moon.

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We pushed each other behind the smuggler. Fearful, that I will fall behind, I jumped to the front each time my feet and breath deceived me and pushed towards the back where two elders always stayed. For the whole trip, I found their behaviour strange.

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We go deeper into the sunflower fields. As time goes on, I breathe heavily and fear going back. I do not want all the distance we’ve come to be for nothing. Our Pakistani smuggler sits us near a river bank surrounded by forest. I lie down and look at the moon. I think of the Netherlands. Will I arrive safely? As usual, I mummer prayers every time I feel weak and scared.

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Suddenly, a hand of a refugee land on my shoulder with medicine, ‘This will ease your agony.’ I look at him and take the medicine. I am powerless to even say thanks.

The smuggler urges us to continue our walk. We sink in muddy fields, but keeping jogging. The same refugee who gave me the medicine was pushing me on and waiting for me when if I fell back.

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Then we arrived to that damned lorry and stayed there for six hours.  

In that small lorry, the world becomes oppressive for you and others around you. The smuggler did not mention that before. As soon as you sit in a corner while others stretch over you, they become like you; they are also challenged by time and risk of death to reach their dream. That’s when your imagination start to repeat the picture of the lorry in Austria and its victims that filled the news and social media just a few days before.

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Will your death be that easy? In that small space, you keep trying to catch your breath through small holes in the lorry’s roof. You want to stop your suffocation while the lorry’s roof drops water as the breathing cause’s humidity. All our attempts to stop the Hungarian lorry driver fail. We just want to catch our breath even for a short while.

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Instead, he accelerates carelessly, ignoring our wishes and our wish to survive. He stops only 2 kilometers before the Hungarian-Austrian border, and then he runs away when he finds himself surrounded by the Hungarian police, who fenced the lorry, freed our breath and got us ready for yet another arrest. They threaten our longing dream.

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When daylight came I saw the guy who helped during the night trip. I wanted to apologise to him and thank him. He looked weak and extremely exhausted. He gave me strength and supported me all the way here. What happened did not give us a chance to have a chat. I only spoke to him after when the Hungarian police surrounded our lorry. I said to him: ‘I will run away. Austria is near. I will not look back.’

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He answers: ‘Don’t do it. You cannot run all that distance. You are sick.’ I dig my eyes in the ground and lose myself in the nearby forest. I run. I do not stop until half an hour later when I am in Austria. Imagine that. I do not know if that guy found salvation himself. How can I find him and say thank you, a phrase I held inside me that night under a full summer moon. I pray in my heart that he and others who chase the European dream to be safe. I count the warm nights here and repeat ‘How are you?’ in Dutch accent. I now spend my days as if I did not have all that suffrage.